Integrating Rails 4, timekit api, rest-client and Devise - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am a newbie Rails 4 developer and need some help adding an API to my simple application using rest-client. For simplification, I will just ask about the API's authentication system.
I have a simple app which uses the Devise gem for authentication. I would like for every user that creates an account to have a calendar for scheduling and booking purposes. to achieve this I am using an API called timekit (http://timekit.io/). Their authentication system responds the to following cURL code example:
curl -X POST \
-H 'Timekit-App: docs' \
-d '{
"email": "doc.brown#timekit.io",
"password": "DeLorean"
}' \
https://api.timekit.io/v2/auth
This will then return the following JSON:
{
"data": {
"activated": true,
"email": "doc.brown#timekit.io",
"first_name": "Dr. Emmett",
"img": "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/7a613e5348d63476276935025",
"last_name": "Brown",
"last_sync": null,
"name": "Dr. Emmett Brown",
"timezone": "America/Los_Angeles",
"token": "UZpl3v3PTP1PRwqIrU0DSVpbJkNKl5gN",
"token_generated_at": null,
"api_token": "FluxCapacitator", // note that this is usually a randomized string and not an actual word
}
}
So now my questions are the following:
1) Where in the Rails framework do I implement this?
2) How do I do so using rest-client instead of cURL?
3) How do I integrate this with Devise?
4)What are good resources to enhance my own understanding of what I am actually doing here?

Answer 1

Awesome to see your using Timekit (I'm one of the core devs) :)
We don't currently have a ruby gem and I'm not a Ruby developer, but here's a quick code example on how to accomplish this with the HTTParty library:
# Global configs for "admin" user
TK_ADMIN_USER = 'my-email#gmail.com'
TK_ADMIN_TOKEN = '12345ABCD'
# Example usage:
# timekit = Timekit.new(TK_ADMIN_USER, TK_ADMIN_TOKEN)
# tk_user = timekit.create_user(account)
# someInternalUser.update(tk_token: tk_user.token)
class Timekit
include HTTParty
base_uri 'https://api.timekit.io'
headers 'Timekit-App' => 'your-app-name'
def initialize(user, password)
#auth = {username: user, password: password}
end
def create_user(account)
options = {
body: {
"email" => account.email,
"first_name" => account.first_name,
"last_name" => account.last_name,
"timezone" => "America/Los_Angeles"
}.to_json,
basic_auth: #auth,
}
self.class.post('/v2/users/', options)
end
def create_calendar(account)
options = {
body: {
name: "Bookings",
description: "Hold bookings for clients."
}.to_json,
basic_auth: #auth
}
self.class.post('/v2/calendars', options)
end
end
https://gist.github.com/laander/83cb7f5dde1f933173c7
In general, the idea is to create a user through our API (you can do it transparently whenever a user signs up in your onboarding) and then save the API Token that the API returns. After that, you can perform API calls impersonating that users (fetch calendars, create events, query availability etc)
Just write us in the chat on timekit.io if you need more hands-on help!

Answer 2

You might consider creating a small library to wrap interactions with the Timekit web API in the /lib directory of your project. I didn't see a gem for this web API, so you might consider extracting this logic into one so the community can benefit.
The rest-client gem appears pretty easy to use:
auth_hash = {
"email" => "doc.brown#timekit.io",
"password" => "DeLorean"
}
RestClient.post "https://api.timekit.io/v2/auth", auth_hash.to_json, content_type: :json, accept: :json
If you are creating a new Timekit account for each user, you might consider adding the credential to the User model or another related model that stores the credential.